


Lessons in Darkness: Sonata

by ScarlettsLetters



Series: Lessons in Darkness [1]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Venice, Awesome Wanda Maximoff, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bondage, Bottom Natasha Romanov, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Courtesans, Dom Wanda Maximoff, Dom/sub, Established Wanda Maximoff/Stephen Strange, F/F, F/M, Girls Kissing, Historical Fantasy, Lesbian Sex, Minor Stephen Strange, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Porn With Plot, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Stephen Strange is a Voyeur, Strangewitch, Time Travelling Lesbians, Venezia | Venice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 17:42:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14525865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarlettsLetters/pseuds/ScarlettsLetters
Summary: In search of something to oppose a coming doom, Doctor Strange dispatches his beloved, Wanda Maximoff, to steal a missing piece of the Book of the Vishanti from another dimension. That treasured grimoire happens to be in the possession of the famed courtesan Natasha Romanova in an alternate universe Venice.





	Lessons in Darkness: Sonata

**Author's Note:**

> Themesong: Outro -- M83 (from the Versailles soundtrack)
> 
> Part Two: [Allegro](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528643)
> 
> Part Three: [Adagio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14537856)
> 
> * * *
> 
> Leçons des ténèbres -- lessons in darkness -- are a genre of French baroque music popularized during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Louis enjoyed hearing virtuoso solos in private performances. As lyrical expressions, the music speaks to the days of mourning before a resurrection. If you've seen Infinity War, you know what I'm talking about.

"The woman I have to impress is a whore."

"I would hardly call her a whore." The tall, iron-haired man tilts his head slightly. "A virtuoso performer accomplished in the fine arts and culture."

"A virtuoso who conveniently lives in a brothel. I know what that means, Doctor."

The brunette young woman compresses her lips together, placing her palms flat to the table. A chronic itch dances along her fingertips, a familiar brush like rose petals along her skin. With a thought, the hex would bend a rift in space to remove her immediately.

He pauses and extends a scarred hand to her, a fingertip catching her under the chin. Even stilled by that familiar gesture, she feels the shaking extend up his arm.

"Wanda." His voice drops an octave, a whisper and barely that. "Do you believe I would ask this of you if there were any other way?"

Wrenching her head away, even by a few delicate degrees, takes more effort than hoisting a building or transporting herself from one continent to another in the twinkling of an eye. Because he is honest, in his imperturbable way, and the gesture seals the bitter fact she cannot exactly wish away.

"Damn you and your mantle." Rough words seethe over his teeth. "And  _ him _ . That blasted--"

"Love, please. You shouldn't take his name--"

"Heartless, cold, slavemaster--"

"Wanda."

"Donkey's arse," she spits out. "Agamotto asks too much."

Strange slants his gaze down at her, tracing the contour of her jaw up to her cheekbone in reverse of what anyone else would try. "He does. I accepted the responsibility when I became Sorcerer Supreme, though you never agreed to the tasks set before us. Another test of our love, and if you were to walk away, I would not judge you."

"You bastard. You wouldn't judge me, but you know even trying would tear me apart."

"Us, love." He stoops to kiss her brow, his lips warm on her golden skin. 

Wanda's shoulders drop under her burgundy coat. Love demands cruel things, and nothing so great as the burdens thrown at her as the consort of the greatest mage in the dimension. She accepts him leaving at odd hours of the night or returning in dire physical condition, beaten and burned but triumphant.

As long as she remains silent, he holds her. Silence does not change the gravity of the situation. "Why can't you simply open a gate and seize the paperwork?"

"In that dimension, Venetian buildings are warded as a matter of course. The call of a courtesan," he uses the word carefully, "is an honoured one. They contract with absolute direction and privacy. You can see where someone stepping through the wall presents a professional hazard they will try to diminish. Your hexes do not register as magic."

"Only bending reality." Her mouth twists into a frown.

"Further, Miss Romanova has reason to distrust men and women equally. But a young woman of Venetian acquaintance registers as less of a threat."

"Venice is Italian, you may recall."

"And her colonies included outposts on the Balkans, where I do believe your home country lies."

Of course he knows that. A man of Strange's intellectual calibre knows  _ exactly  _ the lines of every historical territory and nation in Europe lie. It irks her all the worse, that he clearly thought this harebrained scheme through. Then again, seeing all ends is something of his forte.

She pinches the bridge of her nose, a gesture so like him Strange dryly chuckles in spite of himself. His hands slide down to her arms, bracketing them.

"You do realize the chances of me slipping in and out without her noticing are next to nil if she's as good as you say she is."

"I am aware."

"That means pretending to sleep with her."

"Actually sleeping with her. Pretense will get you killed, at worst." The old worry lines dance between his brows, radiating like the sun.

She goes bolt upright and shoves him away, the chair squealing when the bare feet scrape across the library's wooden floor.

A barrage of angry retorts stays chained up only with the greatest difficulty. She swallows her anger, eyes starting to glow a faint amaranthine hue that always presages trouble. The heat burns her cheeks in a spreading rose tide.

"Beloved?"

Hand waved, she shuts down the imagination piecing together dreadful images of bare limbs and lacy skirts tearing in a froth ridden confectionary. It had to involve chaise longues. Every horrific fantasy involves chaise longues, if it's of any quality. "You might wish to reconsider calling me that if you also intend to cheat on you by sleeping with another woman."

Light flashes over his steely blue eyes before he turns away and she knows full well that pricks his interminable pride.  _ Good. Serves him right _ .

The scarlet cloak so often on his shoulders flaps right off it, hanging midair, collars perked. The hem swishes in short ripples.

Strange swats at the heavy, embroidered edge. "Not you too. You know what's at stake."

"Other than your record," she says, "I really don't."

"She knows the whereabouts of the Hermetic Corpus." Her blank stare warrants a lengthier sigh. "Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary sorcerer. Apocryphal accounts say he penned the Hermetic Corpus, the most complete account of classical magic."

"That sounds like the Book of the Vishanti."

"That  _ is _ the Book of the Vishanti, or rather a volume stolen in antiquity. Hermes Trismegistus was both a master of the mystic arts and a Sorcerer Supreme. The volume vanished during a siege on Constantinople. Whomever took it scattered it in pieces, no doubt in hopes we would never retrieve it, or not enough to ever break the ciphers. My predecessors searched without success for the book. At best we recovered segments of the  _ Corpus _ ."

"What of the thief?" 

"Either a jealous sorcerer or a cultist of Dormammu eager to remove from our hands the surest means to prevent Armageddon if it ever came," Strange says. He closes his eyes.

Crossing her arms, she stares at the rows of books and then up to the Victorian windows framing the night sky.  "A cultist steals this book containing knowledge about the end of the world. A great war. All the sorcerers before you failed to get it, but you solve the riddle of fifteen hundred years just now. You then decide to send me out to seduce Natasha Romanov in another version of Venice to get it."

"Put that way, it sounds a bit trite. But yes."

"And why have you decided on this now?"

The doctor only offers that faint smile, his gaze shuttered. What works on his peers fails so much to arouse an inkling of awe in her. She fixes him with that burning, resolute glare.

"Why, Stephen?"

The use of his given name, usually reserved for the bedroom, knocks a chip off the smug mask. "Wanda, there's a dreadful risk we run every day. As long as we are alive, we could die. I gather what I can to prolong our time living, and everyone else's time, for that matter."

"No wonder you need me. You have no better hope of seducing a Widow than you do cross-stitching a pillow." If she had one at hand, Wanda would throw it at him. Instead, she grimaces. "This is not  _ our _ Natasha, at least."

Strange strokes his jaw. "No. The Russian Empire still has a Black Widow program with very much the same parameters."

"And wards against teleportation."

"The dimension is somewhat higher magic than you may be used to, yes, though technologically it sits around the nineteenth century. Gaslight, lamps, and gondoliers rather than carriages, given the city," he says.

Wanda looks down at her clothing, the black leggings and ragged skirt completely out of keeping with any vision of a nineteenth century painting. "I see. Hardly look appropriate to the part."   
  
Strange snaps his fingers and her beloved leather coat turns into a hooded cloak, her ebony skirt brushing over her boots. "Part of your charm. An exotic traveler come to spend her coin among the famed courtesans of Venice."

"Venice is a drowned city at the head of a brackish lagoon." Her fingers pinch at the skirt, thinner and gossamer than she expected. She can see her black legging through the fabric.

"Not this city. She rules an empire over half the Mediterranean, as far as Alexandria in Egypt and southern France. Women have more liberties than our nineteenth century, but fewer than you have now. It's customary to wear masks and cloaks when out and about to preserve an illusion of social equality, but of course society is divided into classes there same as anywhere."

"Sounds charming."

"In many ways, it may be. You should have few risks. I would never send you somewhere you're in true danger."

Wanda arches her eyebrows. "You just said the target might kill me if I didn't sleep with her!"

Strange smiles that wan curve of his mouth that never ignites his eyes. "Ah, you caught that. Miss Romanova acts the courtesan. Venice celebrates them much like geisha have a place of honour in Japan. She showed up on the scene a few years ago and built a reputation of being nearly untouchable, demure even. Her patrons pay dearly. The city is wealthy and debauched, which makes Miss Romanova's feats even more remarkable." He breathes out, tension colouring his curt gestures. "She keeps company exclusively in the Ca di Perle."

A laugh stutters past her lips in spite of herself. "The House of Pearl?"

"The one and the same. She has a copy of the Corpus, if my research is true. I trust you can retrieve it. Use whatever means you must," Strange says. He takes her hands, pulling them to his lips. Brushing her skin with his goatee, he plants a kiss upon the serrated ridge of her honey-gold knuckles. "May I impose this request on you?"

"A bit late of you to ask." Her pulse dances incandescent in her veins. "Have you put any thought to how am I to best an imperial Russian assassin?"

He stills, his hands tightening around her own. Answer enough. "Far more than I should." A dark, ironic chuckle dips over her knuckles, and his lambent eyes sharpen, narrowed. Too many promises written there for her to read. "Trust your instincts. Come back to me, beloved. Do not take needless risks to acquire the Corpus. Your safety matters more."

He sets a golden feast before her and tells her to stay safely in her room, rather than bring him back a charmed dish. The decision already made in her heart, she resolves to at least sound confident. "You would not ask if you did not have need." His own words, tossed like sand back at him, carry the timbre of a laugh. "Besides, how hard can getting a leg up on Natasha be?"   
  
"You'll need to be limber," he adds.

"Aren't you lucky I have always been flexible," she says. Gossamer wisps of pomegranate light flow around her, twisting and bending in on themselves. "Show me where."

Strange opens his hands to reveal a vast, glowing map of the dimensions, outlined in starlight and firefly sparks of dying copper. She follows when the image shifts, zeroing in from a bird's eye view to a skyline of towers and clay tile shod roofs. Sunlight in its fading ruddy beams deflects off a pair of immense domes, transforming them into a sheen of living fire. Narrow balconies and filigree bridges span azure canals, and the boats! More than she can count throng the harbour and weave along the shoreline.

"Go with grace, beloved."   
  
She holds firm to the image before her, and takes a breath. Stepping between one world and the next has never been difficult, only a matter of wishing it so. Never looking back, Wanda drops into starlit freefall. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always warmly welcomed. Feel free to drop in a comment or kudo if you enjoyed this work! <3


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